Plans to resettle 51 refugees into Northampton ground to a halt this weekend following President Donald Trump's executive order suspending the United States' refugee program, leaving uncertain futures for the African and Middle Eastern nationals scheduled to find new homes in the Pioneer Valley this year.

Trump's order, which also temporarily banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, paused the country's refugee program for 120 days and prohibited the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely.

18 of Northampton's 51 planned refugees had already cleared all State Department vetting and been approved for entry prior to Trump's order, according to Catholic Charities Agency of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, the local agency that coordinates refugee resettlements with the State Department in the Pioneer Valley.

Those people, who include children as young as 9 months old, were supposed to begin arriving as soon as Feb. 20. Now, they will remain in camps and temporary shelters overseas, said Catholic Charities Agency of Springfield Executive Director Kathryn Buckley-Brawner.

"It is probably as bad as we thought it could possible be," Buckley-Brawner said.

Trump has described the refugee program suspension as a necessary national security measure designed to develop better tools for identifying potential terrorists.

Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!

Critics have disputed his reasoning, including hundreds of State Department employees who signed a memo opposing the executive order as counter-productive and against American values.

For Northampton, the most immediate impact of the suspension will be the absence of 18 refugees who had already passed the State Department's two year vetting process and been given final approval to settle in the city.

Some incoming refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been in refugee camps since 1996, when an invasion and then civil war broke out that has since killed millions of people. Children who would have arrived range in age from nine months to nine years old, and the families came from Syria, Iraq and Bhutan, Buckley-Brawner said.

The Syrian family was part of the Kurdish minority group and had fled both government and ISIS violence into the Kurdish region of Iraq, she said.

"They are one of the ethnic groups that is very much persecuted and discriminated against," Buckley-Brawner said.

Catholic Charities of Springfield does not have direct contact with refugees until they enter the United States.

Rather, the State Department assigns cases through the charity's parent organization, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and then the local agency gives final confirmation that it can accept the settlement -- a process known as "assurance."

All 18 refugees had received final assurance, but were not in transit by the time the order went into effect and so are now in limbo, Buckley-Brawner said. Northampton's 32 other expected refugees had not yet been assigned.

"Because they did not have their airplane tickets at the moment this order was signed their travel was suspended," she said.

Catholic Charities had held public meetings in Northampton and recruited volunteers to aid for refugees once they arrived. The State Department provides just 90 days of funding once refugees resettle; Catholic Charities had found volunteers to commit to long-term support, and three Congolese families had been assigned to local "circles of care" prior to the suspension.

In December of 2015, the Northampton City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for the city to serve as a sanctuary for refugees from the Syrian civil war, which has killed at least 470,000 people, according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research.

At a public meeting in September of last year, some residents raised concerns about funding and whether an influx of new refugees would divert services from Northampton's existing homeless population. Supporters, including Mayor David Narkewicz, said the city was seeking grants and volunteer support to defray costs.

Buckley-Brawner said she hopes the suspension will expire as planned after 120 days, and that the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees will be lifted. Her organization and others are firmly opposed to the order, and are advocating politically to reverse it and considering legal challenges.

"We feel that from a faith based perspective that this order does not reflect the way we feel about those who are marginalized and against whom violence is perpetrated," Buckley-Brawner said. "As a country we always have been open to those who need to flee, who need safe harbor. We feel very strongly that this action has been very uncompassionate and ill thought-out